


I'm trying not to let it show

by reindeersidecar



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, I'm sorry I don't know what happened, This was funny at first and then it got angsty somehow??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 07:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7883074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reindeersidecar/pseuds/reindeersidecar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fareeha has many tattoos, but Angela wonders about a particular one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm trying not to let it show

It shouldn’t really surprise Angela that Fareeha returned from the war _slathered_ in tattoos—it’s a longstanding tradition—but it does. She remembers examining them during the soldier’s first physical since the Recall under the harsh fluorescents of the med bay, eyes roaming almost frantically to absorb all the imagery, careful not to linger lest she offend her patient or draw suspicion. It was hard then to really see _everything_ , but she _had_ seen a few things—namely the image tattooed across Fareeha’s broad shoulders of a naked woman tastelessly lounging upon a disproportionate rocket. There were others. The Eye of Horus, of course, a lion head on her bicep Angela thought emblematic of Reinhardt—one of Fareeha’s childhood idols—a star on her hip for Jesse she assumed, tallies along her forearm—marking kills or losses, Angela wasn’t certain. That was all she managed to absorb in that visit.

But standing now in the gym, watching Fareeha’s body flex under the stress of her barbell—a rather _impressive_ sight, if she’s being frank—she learns those tattoos intimately.

Her observations come to a jarring halt when she sees one tattoo in particular. It’s the tackiest thing she’s ever seen, tackier than the naked woman and her rocket, or even Amelie’s tattoo lining her forearm.  A word—a name? Written in calligraphic Arabic, encircled by a heart, right over her ribs.

It shouldn’t bug Angela, but it does.

But _why?_ For God’s sake, she’s just her _doctor_ , a colleague, a person with absolutely no personal claim to this beautiful woman. She has no right to be this curious, not after rebuking Fareeha’s advances when they were younger (as cute as her infatuation was at the time, Fareeha was only eighteen).

That makes Angela all the more curious. She wants to know who replaced her in Fareeha’s heart, who occupied Fareeha’s thoughts when she lay in her sleeping bag all those nights in the military. Who made Fareeha’s heart clench with the worry she would never see them again every time she flirted with death.

Fareeha catches her staring—probably a bit too intensely—and she drops the barbell at her feet. “How’s my form, Doctor?” She flashes that boyish grin of hers, and it leaves Angela slightly dazed, like looking into the light of a retinoscope.

“Impeccable,” she says, watching the sheen of sweat shimmer across the soldier’s taut abdomen.

Fareeha saunters over to her, sweatpants slung loosely around her lean hips. “I believe my physical was last month,” Fareeha answers, and when Angela meets her eyes, the woman’s brow is cocked curiously, though her mouth is quirked into a roguish smile. Angela realizes after a few moments of owlish blinking that Fareeha was commenting on how Angela had just been blatantly _ogling_ her.

“It bears repeating,” Angela replies with a smile of her own.

Fareeha’s brows lift at that remark. She’s positively grinning now. “For my sake or your own?”

“I like to think of it as mutually beneficial.”

Fareeha chuckles. “Ah, yes, I see. You get to ogle me, and I get groped by a lovely woman.”

Angela smiles at how the laughter carries through the timbre of her voice. “Precisely.” She does well to keep the embarrassment from her own voice.

She remembers the tattoo again. It’s there, a ghost of what it was, whispering across the dark skin over Fareeha’s ribs. She almost reaches out to touch it, as if touching it would reveal its meaning.

Fareeha seems to notice where her attention has drifted, or perhaps she hasn’t and Angela is being paranoid, but the soldier crosses her arms, covering the tattoo.

So, a name it is, then.

Angela tries to recall the black letterforms later that night while she gruels over paperwork. She searches for them on the backs of her eyelids. She can’t remember even a single segment of the name, and she drops her face into her hands, hating how worked up she’s getting over a silly tattoo that’s so old it’s practically faded into Fareeha’s skin. For all she knows, it just says _justice_ across that heart. The thought has her laughing wearily into her palms.

The next time she sees the damn heart tattoo she is patching Fareeha up in the med bay post-mission. She applies a disinfectant salve to the burn across the soldier’s bicep. Fareeha hisses under her breath. Usually Angela will distract a patient with conversation—or in Fareeha’s case, subtle flirtation—but all she can think about is the tattoo.

She figures that’s as good a distraction as any. “You have a lot of tattoos,” she says. She lets the remark sit there in the silence before she continues, “Do they mean anything?”

Fareeha looks at her. She then glances down to inspect her own body, as if seeing the tattoos for the first time. “Sure,” she offers, “some more meaningful than others.” She points out the obvious ones that Angela has already noticed—the lion head, the gold star, her uadjet—the tallies she discloses are for soldiers she lost under her command. She describes nearly every tattoo except the heart.

Angela pokes her in the ribs, where the name is printed into her skin. “Who’s the lucky person?”

Fareeha chuckles, betraying no discomfort toward Angela’s prying. She runs her fingers across the heart. “It’s awful, isn’t it? I got it when I was eighteen and very, very drunk.”

Angela laughs and winds a piece of gauze around Fareeha’s injury. “Well, then, they must have been _very_ special to you.”

“She is,” Fareeha murmurs, the humor of the exchange lost on her. The present tense of her words cut straight through Angela.

Angela threads a safety pin through the gauze and pinches it shut. “Oh, she’s still in your life, then?”

Fareeha raises a brow at her, grinning. “Dr. Ziegler, are you _jealous_?”

Angela purses her lips. “ _No_ , don’t be ridiculous. I’m—” She turns away to hide the flush in her face, pretending to busy herself with something at her desk. “I’m merely being nosy. Don’t mind me.” She hands Fareeha an antibiotic. The soldier eyes it warily a moment, then her, before taking it and sliding off the examination table. She pulls her shirt over her head.

“I hope this girl cares about you as much as you do about her,” Angela says, and she hopes her voice does not betray her disappointment.

Fareeha chuckles, and it’s a deep, resonant, lovely sound. “You tell me.”

“What do you mean?”

She calms her laughter. “Doctor, you’re the girl. This name here? This is yours.”

Angela blinks at her. “What?” She lifts Fareeha’s shirt and runs her fingers over the tattoo. She erupts into a fit of laughter before she clamps her hand down over her mouth to contain the raucous sound. “Oh, Fareeha, it’s _terrible_.”

Fareeha laughs. “Why do you think I’ve been so discreet about it?”

“Why would you get such a horrid thing?” Angela asks between bouts of laughter.

“I was drunk teenage who was positively certain I was in _love_ with the beautiful Dr. Angela Ziegler,” she admits.

Angela’s laughter dissolves into a happy sigh, and she sneaks another peek at the offensive tattoo. “What will Ana say when she sees that you’ve branded yourself with my name? She’ll kill me, I think.”

Fareeha lowers her shirt and grins, holding Angela by the waist. “My mother doesn’t need to know about any of this.”

Angela draws her finger down Fareeha’s sternum. “And what other women’s names are you hiding on your body, Fareeha Amari?”

“Just the one,” she answers with a flash of her teeth, “but if you don’t believe me, Dr. Ziegler, you’re more than welcome to conduct a thorough, physical examination.” She says the last few words deliberately, each syllable punctuated, and Angela is frozen there, arrested by her dark eyes and the way her breath curls over her parted lips.

The med bay doors swish open then.

The two of them step back from each other at once. Lena is standing there, eyes wide. “I didn’t see _anything,_ ” she says despite the knowing grin on her face.

Angela smooths out her blouse and her skirt. “Do you need something, Lena?” Fareeha coughs into her hand.

“Just some aspirin!” she chirps, and she takes a bottle and zips out of the med bay, doors closing behind her.

Fareeha scratches the back of her head. “I should go.”

“Fareeha, wait,” Angela murmurs, and she grabs the soldier by her elbow. She turns Fareeha toward her again and slides her hand up her shirt, to where the heart lay across her ribs. “I do care about you, you know.” Angela stares at the tattoo. “It’s difficult though, this situation we’re in…” She doesn’t have to spell it out for Fareeha. The fraternization laws, the Omnic Crisis—these are things they shouldn’t complicate with _feelings_.

“I know,” Fareeha whispers, brow knit, and she covers the hand Angela has over her ribs with her own. It’s large and warm and Angela is moved by the way it fits perfectly around her own hand. “I’ll be watching over you out there, Angela.”

Angela smiles, tears welling up in her eyes. “As will I be watching over you.”

Fareeha returns her smile and leans down, kissing a tear from her cheek. Her lips are light, as gone as soon as they are there, and Angela misses them immensely as if she’s known them a lifetime. Fareeha bids her goodnight then and disappears through the med bay doors.


End file.
